A critical review of local and world news. This blog originally commented on the Moncton Times and Transcript but has enlarged its scope.

Friday, July 1, 2011

July 1: The good news is....

...it won't take you long to read the The Moncton Times and Transcript today. There's not much to read.

On page one, Brent Mazerolle continues his series on all you ever wanted to know about traffic lanes. The only other big news in Section A is that Canada Day will be sunny. WILL be sunny? Don't those ace newshawks know that we are readinig the paper on Canada Day? So shouldn't they say it IS sunny? And haven't some of the swifter minds among the editors realized that if it's sunny, we've probably already noticed it? (In fact, I am reading this at noon; and it's overcast.)

Okay, that takes care of all that's worth reading in Section A. In sports, the hot item is an an ad disguised as an editorial to shill tickets for the CFL game in Moncton. (Hurry, hurry, hurry. Only 2,000 left. plus instruction on how to order one.)

The big news (almost half of the NewsToday section) is that Willian and Kate have arrived. And they're smiling and saying they're delighted to be here. I'm so relieved. I was afraid they would frown, and say this country looks like a dog's breakfast.

And Kate wore a dress designed by a Canadian. (I could barely hold back a tear on that one.)

There was a brief mention of France supplying arms to Libyan "rebels" - an obvious violation of the UN mandate which said the NATO force was not supposed to taked sides. Why are Canadians there? Nobody seems clear on that.

The eidtorial and op ed pages are amusing. Norbert Cunnigham writes a gumpy "To the contrary" column about those who do mindless cheerleading about Canada on Canada Day. But in the editorial and the op ed pages, both of which Norbert is responsible for, are two prime examples of mindless cheerleading.

And both show an ignorance of Canada in babbling about how we welcomed immigrants of all nations, etc. In fact, Canada has a record of exploitation, killing, bigotry, and racism that takes second place to no-one. The Chinese were brought in to build the railways because they were cheaper than Canadians. They were worked close to death, then tossed aside to survive any way they could with cheap laundries and whatever else they could find. Nobody would hire a Chinese for a decent job.

Jews were banned, ghettoized, discriminated against from the 1890s on. We refused to help those who were trying to flee Nazi Germany - even though we knew what was happening to them. We continued that refusal even after the war.(Ever wonder why Israelis don't give a damn about what we thind of them?) We refused Jews, blacks and orientals equal opportunity to enter our unversities into the 1950s.

We put Ukrainian-Canadians into concentration camps in World War One. We did the same to Japanese-Canadians in World War Two, inflicting scars that will never heal. (We also stole all their property and sold it cheap to friends of the government.

We caused so much damage to native peoples that, to this day, they have not recovered.

We killed South Africans to please the British, just as we now kill Libyans and Afghanis
to please the US.

We have delivered up our own citizens for torture, knowing what was going to happen to them.

There is an column on climate change by the International Climate Science Coalition. It seems to be another of those climate change denier outfits sponsored by big business (Like the Simon Fraser Institute and AIMS); though it's hard to tell.

Anyway, it's main point is we should not waste time with cleaning up the air and the seas and the soil. We should help peoplel to adjust to the inevitable change.

Right. They should learn to adjust to having no fish in the sea, and no animal stock or fruit and vegetables on land.

The final sewage is a column from the Fontier Centre for Public Policy(another big business "think tank" on changes we should make in education. Much of it is bafflegab that I doubt whether the writer undestands. Some of it is outright lying.

This is an example of big business soft-sell to reorganize our schools so big business can get a piece of our education budget for it's personal profit. The game is to descredit the public schools, with the cooperation of propaganda sheets like the Times&Transcript, and insert their pseudo-scientific standardized testing, etc. into the schools - playing with our chnildren's minds to satisfy their greed..

Luckily, this column will have liitle effect. The writer is such a bad communicator that he doesn't know how to write for a general audience. Most people (including me) will see this just as the gibberish it is..

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About Me

born into poverty in Montreal. (1933 was a bad year to be born.) Kicked out of school in grade 11. Became factory hand, office boy.
Did a general BA, mostly at night at Sir George Williams University, and partly while a youth worker for YMCA, camps, etc. Then teacher training at McGill.
Taught gradea 7 to 11 for six years. Loved it.
Quit to do MA at Acadia, then PhD (History) at Queen's.
Taught history three years at UPEI, then some 35 years at Concordia U in Montreal.
Loved the teaching. Thought the profs had more pompous and useless asses among then than is really desirable outside a zoo.
work experience:
factory, office,social group work, office,camp director, teacher.
Radio - c. 3000 broadcasts, mostly current events.
TV - many hundred appearances, mostly commentaries.
Film - some writing, advising, voice-overs.
Writing - no count, some hundreds. Some academic, but mostly for popular market, and ranging from short stories to stories to newspaper and magazine columns to history books.
professional speaker - close to 2000.
Awards for the above? yep